Memento

Introduction

Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, is based on a short
story by his brother, Jonathan Nolan, called “Memento
Mori”. The film was released in 2000 and is described
by Nolan as “a psychological thriller about a guy who can’t make
new memories and who is looking for revenge”. It belongs to the
neo-noir
film genre, with some of the characteristic features
of bleakness, alienation, paranoia, the presence of a femme fatale
and the lack of a happy ending.

In an interview about the film, Nolan
explained that he was very interested in the process of memory and
in the way it can be distorted. He also stated that, in making
Memento a film about an unreliable amnesic narrator, he had
“attempted to put the audience into the head of the protagonist and
make them experience some of his confusion, uncertainty and
paranoia”. It is precisely for this reason that I believe Memento
has much to offer the mental health practitioner, especially anyone
working with individuals suffering from memory impairment.

Because memory is so deeply entwined with our
sense of identity and is one of the means by which we understand
our world, this film explores how it might feel to be unable to
trust what we know about ourselves, and others that we meet.
Because it uses a complex and unorthodox form of story telling,
Memento challenges us, requiring a greater than usual degree of
concentration and use of our own memory, in pursuit of the truth.
Indeed, the film invites multiple viewings as we strive for greater
understanding, again giving us the experience of a person trying to
work out the world they are perceiving, when handicapped by an
impairment of memory.

The Film

On this occasion, I do not intend to give a
detailed description of the plot but rather to outline the complex
structure of the storytelling as a guide to orientate viewers to
the complex way the film plays with memory and time. Anyone wanting
an “unspoiled” viewing of the film should stop reading now and
return to the blog after watching it.

Memento is essentially a film of two parts,
one filmed in colour and the other in black and white, intertwined
together in alternating sequences that set out to explain the
events leading up to the opening scene. The film’s opening
sequence, in colour, takes place quite literally in reverse and is
the only scene to do this. In it, we witness the revenge killing of
Teddy, a policeman, by Leonard, the protagonist who suffers from
anterograde amnesia. The sequences filmed in colour, tell the story
backwards in short segments that play forwards, whereas the black
and white sequences tell a storyline that unfolds in the
conventional (that is moving forward in time) way. We discover that
the black and white scenes preceded the colour sequences in
chronological time. Often in the colour scenes we are thrust into
the action with Leonard, sharing his lack of understanding about
what he is doing in any particular place. We very soon learn that
the strategy he uses to keep track of events, people and objects,
and to attempt to make sense of his world, is to take polaroid
photos which he then annotates. For the really important things
that he wants to remember, he has them tattooed on various parts of
his body. The final black and white scene seamlessly merges with
the last colour sequence, bringing the whole film to an end as a
complete piece of storytelling, but perhaps failing to provide all
of the answers that the viewer may be seeking after the first
viewing.

Ultimately, Memento is like a puzzle
whose pieces can only be reassembled with the help of an intact
memory. In contrast to Leonard, we can use our memory of previous
scenes to inform our understanding of the consequences of his
actions in the scene that we are currently watching.

Relevance to the field of Mental Health

Memento specifically explores the condition of
anterograde amnesia and reflects the difficulty that sufferers have
in appreciating the passage of time as they struggle to exist with
very limited recent memory. For anyone wanting to gain a better
understanding of what it might feel like to suffer from such a
disability, this film captures some of the aspects of confusion and
perplexity very well. By making the viewer unsure of what to trust
in what they see through Leonard’s eyes, Memento can help the
viewer to appreciate why such an individual may experience
paranoia.

The film can also offer a starting point for a
discussion about the different strategies that may be employed to
prompt the sufferer into recalling recent experiences
(autobiographical memories). There are many different
rehabilitation techniques used to help individuals with anterograde
amnesia. Some involve the use of compensatory techniques like
mobile phone alerts or written notes and diaries, others consist of
intensive training programmes involving the active participation of
the person with their family members. Work by clinical
neuroscientists in Cambridge, UK, comparing written versus visual
aids for memory retrieval in memory impaired individuals, has begun
to suggest that the recording of a pictorial, person-centred view
of events, using a wearable camera, whose images are re-viewed
later on a computer screen, may be an effective way to improve
autobiographical recollection and one that is superior to a written
diary (Berry E, Kapur N, Williams L et al; Neuropsychological
Rehabilitation. 2007; 17(4-5):582-601; The use of a
wearable camera, SenseCam, as a pictorial diary to improve
autobiographical memory in a patient with limbic encephalitis: a
preliminary report).

For anyone wanting to compare the fictional
character of Leonard with a real person suffering from the same
condition, the well-known case of the English musicologist, Clive
Wearing, who has a severe form of anterograde amnesia, offers
further insights into the disability. He is unable to remember more
than 10-30 seconds at a time and has no detailed memories of his
life before herpes simplex encephalitis damaged the hippocampi in
his brain (one of the areas of the brain involved in laying down
memories) more than 20 years ago. He is only able to recognise his
wife, who he married the year before his illness. What is
especially interesting is that he retains his previous ability to
play the piano, because this involves procedural memory (involving
other brain areas such as the basal ganglia and cerebellum). He
featured in a BBC documentary about how humans experience time,
which can be viewed via the Wellcome Collection website.

Another famous amnesic patient, an American
man named Henry Molaison, died in 2008 at the age of 82. An
excellent account of his life with anterograde amnesia, caused as a
result of neurosurgery for epilepsy, is available in The Telegraph obituary published in February
2011. He was studied extensively for many years, and was
particularly interesting because he retained his intellectual
abilities and personality but was unable to live independently or
to hold down a job. Leonard, in the film, illustrates just how
vulnerable and open to exploitation someone is without a
functioning short-term memory, which can help us to understand why
someone with this condition might require supervised care, of some
sort, throughout his or her lifetime.

Memento is a film that requires us to use our
memory to the full, at the same time as giving us the experience of
being in the world without it. I would definitely recommend this
film to anyone interested in memory and its disorders.

Comments

Re: Memento

25/02/2011 08:37:43 by Arun Kumar

....And for the Bollywood lovers - there is a simplified version
available with the all the other usual ingredients - humor, love
and nice songs. Ghajini (2008) is clearly inspired by Momento, and
the protagonist suffers a similar predicament. Overall - a good
movie too!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1166100/

Re: Memento

27/02/2011 22:26:12 by Autobiographical Memory

I had always wondered if Memento (and even Inception) could somehow
work with health science in understanding the mind and memory. Dear
doctoral students: that would be a really great thesis idea!

best,
Chi

Re: Memento

05/03/2011 02:31:48 by Dr bibhusan

Iam always fascinated about how memory works, Memento is an
excellent example of anterograde memory loss and they way memory
effects our thinking, perception and emotion.